Silent Melody (15 page)

“Yass,” she said, getting to her feet and grimacing as her dress clung wetly to her. She walked beside him, glad that he did not offer his arm. When they reached the lawn, she smiled at him, gathered her wet skirts about her, and ran off alone in the direction of the side door.

•   •   •

A
maid answered the bell she had rung, and she signaled to the girl that she wanted hot water. When the maid returned, she carried a large jug of steaming water and a message.

“His grace wishes to see you in the study at your earliest convenience, my lady,” she said, bobbing a curtsy.

Emily felt a fluttering in her stomach. Of all of them, Luke was the one she most dreaded having to face. Not that he had ever been harsh with her. He had never chastised her—or any of his own children. But then Luke never needed to use either harsh words or violence in order to impose his will on his household. His very presence was enough. His eyes were worse. The study! It was a formal summons, then. And her “earliest convenience” meant now, or sooner than now.

She washed quickly, pulled on a clean, dry gown over small hoops, dressed her hair in a hasty knot, and drew a few steadying breaths.

A footman opened the study door for her. Luke was seated behind his desk, writing. He neither looked up nor got to his feet for the whole of one minute. Emily stood silently facing him across the desk. This was deliberate, she knew. She was being made to feel like a recalcitrant servant about to be disciplined.

He set his pen down at last and looked up. As she had expected, his eyes were cold. Also as she had expected, he did not speak for so long that she had to make a conscious effort not to squirm and not to drop her eyes—she, who did not deal in words, was suddenly cowed by their absence. He did not invite her to be seated.

“Well, Emily,” he said, “you have made a young man very unhappy and very angry today. You have humiliated him in the eyes of your family and his own. 'Twas not well done.”

She swallowed.

“You have made your family very unhappy,” he said. “Including Anna. Anna's happiness means more to me than anyone else's in this world. I do not feel kindly disposed toward you.”

She had glanced down briefly as he had lowered his pen. She had seen his knuckles. There were no marks of violence on his face. It had been punishment pure and simple, then. Ashley had not fought back. Just as she would not fight back now.

“I would ask one question,” he said. “What exactly you did with my brother last night and how it came about is a matter for the two of you alone. I am without curiosity. But I would know if it was by mutual consent, Emily. Were you in any way coerced?”

No. Oh no,
she told him. They would never be allowed to think that of Ashley. Had he asked Ashley if
he
had been coerced?

“Thank you,” Luke said. “I did not believe so, but I felt it necessary to ask. And so, Emily, you have freely and rashly given what you had no business giving, and now you choose not to allow Ashley to make restitution. Is that correct?”

She nodded.

“And there is no chance that you do not fully understand? That when you do you will change your mind? That we may prepare for a wedding within the next week?”

Only if she was with child. But she would not know that within a week. She shook her head.

Luke set his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers. “Then you have won back a modicum of my respect,” he surprised her by saying. “It takes character to refuse a man you love more dearly than life merely because marrying him would be the wrong thing to do.”

She had been prepared to stand stony-faced through a scolding and through an argument to allow Ashley to do the proper thing. She felt a rush of tears to her eyes at Luke's unexpected approval.

He waited for her eyes to clear.

“You are dismissed,” he said, nodding curtly, and he lifted his pen and lowered his head again.

On the whole, she thought, stepping from the room and closing the door behind her, she felt almost as if she had been severely punished. Her legs trembled beneath her and her palms felt clammy. It was a strangely comforting feeling.

•   •   •

It
was no longer pleasant to be at Bowden with his family, Ashley discovered. And that was stating the case very mildly indeed. He wandered into the drawing room, where his mother, his uncle, the Hornsbys, the Severidges, and Lady Sterne were taking tea, and felt that he had collided with a wall of frosty silence. He wandered out again. He climbed to the nursery, where all the children with the exception of the Hornsbys' newest, who was sleeping, and young Harry, who was taking his private tea with Anna in an inner room, were ecstatic at seeing a potential new playmate and were instantly buzzing with questions about his face. But Doris made him feel decidedly unwelcome, and even Weims merely raised his eyebrows and turned away to deal with a tug at his coat skirts from a tiny son, who clearly wished to be picked up. Ashley smiled at the children, drew roars of delight from them by telling them he had run into an angry bull, which now looked infinitely worse than he did, raised a hand in farewell, and withdrew.

He would stay, he had decided while walking back to the house with Emily, and help her somehow to face down the terrible scandal that had erupted during the day. At least it had been confined to the family. He doubted that Powell had been treated to the full truth—unless Emmy had been rashly honest with him. He would stay, Ashley thought, and court her more slowly. Given time, she would realize that she had no alternative but to marry him. There could be no other husband for her now.

He would stay and teach her to speak. He would do something useful with his life for a change. It seemed an eternity since he had last done that. He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered how very busy and how very happy he had been during most of his years with the East India Company. Learning to speak would be wonderfully liberating for Emmy. And with one word, slightly mispronounced and spoken in a strange little contralto voice, she had shown him that it was possible.

Staying, teaching her to speak, courting her, would be good for him too. They would take his mind off a past that could not be remedied and could not be atoned for. Perhaps. And perhaps too he would stay and learn from her. There was at least as much to learn as there was to be taught, he suspected.

But soon after returning to the house, he changed his mind. Emmy had set her own course today. She had broken off her betrothal with Powell, and she had refused his marriage offer—twice, even though he had tried, and he was sure other members of her family had tried, to explain to her the inevitability of their marrying. She would not change her mind. Emmy was someone who never took the easy course if it was not the course she wished to take. She recognized the inevitability of nothing.

One could only respect her—and wish sometimes to shake the living daylights out of her. He smiled despite himself. He was fonder of Emmy than of anyone else in his life, strange as the thought might be, especially considering the fact that he had almost completely forgotten about her while he was away. Though he was no longer so sure of that—there had been that urgent, quite irrational urge to come home to Bowden. However it was, his fondness for Emmy was the main problem today. He did not want to marry her, if the truth were known. He was as relieved by her stubbornness as he was alarmed by it.

He hated to think of Emmy as a wife, a lover. He remembered her warm, soft, shapely body, naked beneath his own. He remembered her tight virginity. He remembered the urgency of his need driving into her. And he felt something that was definitely not revulsion, but was . . . a great sadness. A deep shame. He had known what he had no wish to know. He had known her as a woman. Yet he wanted to know her only as the sprite he had seen yesterday morning, when she had stood on the rock at the falls, refusing to listen to Powell. And he wanted to remember her as his little fawn of seven years ago.

“Where may I find his grace?” he asked a footman in the hall, looking him directly in the eye, scorning to try to hide his face in the shadows. One could be very sure that what the family knew abovestairs, the servants knew in even greater detail belowstairs. That was in the nature of life in a great house. The servants probably knew exactly how many punches Luke had thrown, even though Ashley himself had not kept count.

“He is in the study, my lord,” the footman informed him.

“Ask him if Lord Ashley Kendrick may have a word with him,” Ashley said formally, and waited in the hall until the footman reappeared and beckoned him.

Luke was seated behind his desk. He looked up coolly when his brother came inside but neither rose to his feet nor offered Ashley a chair. Ashley recognized the tactic, which had always been damnably effective. Seated behind his desk, Luke was the Duke of Harndon, undisputed master of Bowden and all its properties, undisputed head of his family. Eight years ago, as a wild, rebellious young man who had been going nowhere in life except to possible ruin, Ashley had stood thus before Luke's desk more than once. Now he felt like that young man again. He had become an independent, successful, highly respected businessman in India. But he had let his life fall apart, and it had continued its decline in the few days since his return home. It was time he did something about it. The resolve he had made within the past half hour was strengthened.

“You wished to speak to me?” Luke asked.

“I will not ask if she may stay here,” Ashley said. “'Twould be an insult to the love you and Anna have always shown her. I would ask only that you ensure she is left in peace. There are to be no recriminations, no insults, no coldness. She is blameless.”

“And yet, my dear,” Luke said, “she has assured me that she was not coerced.”

Ashley's jaw tightened. “She was blameless,” he said. “You will promise me something, Luke.”

“I will?” No one looked more haughty than Luke with raised eyebrows.

“You will send for me,” Ashley said, “if she is with child. I will come immediately, bringing a license with me.”

“You are going somewhere?” The eyebrows were still up.

“Where I should have gone as soon as I set foot in England,” Ashley said. “To Penshurst. To Alice's home. My home. There will be work to do there. A steward has been running the estate single-handed for over four years, since the death of Alice's brother. 'Tis time I took the reins into my own hands.”

“Yes,” Luke said. “You were always good at that.”

“I will leave at first light tomorrow,” Ashley said. “But 'tis not far. Only in Kent. I can come back here quickly.”

“Yes.” Luke nodded.

“I am fond of her,” Ashley said. “I want you to know that. 'Twas not—ugly. I am fond of her.”

“Yes.” Luke's eyes coolly examined his face. “You always were, Ash. Fond of her. Sit and have a drink with me. When my eyes alighted on you in the ballroom two evenings ago, and when I had convinced myself that they did not deceive me, I was more delighted than I can possibly express in words. My brother—my only surviving brother had come home. I pictured myself having long conversations with you, taking long walks and rides with you, while our wives and children became acquainted. 'Tis a picture that has been dashed into a thousand pieces since then.”

He came around the desk, set a hand on Ashley's shoulder, and indicated two chairs by the fireplace.

A
SHLEY
was leaving. He was going to Penshurst, the estate in Kent he had inherited through his wife. It was not as far away as India. Indeed, it was only a day's drive away. Closer than Victor's or Charlotte's. But Emily knew as she sat on the window seat in her room, hugging her knees, the side of her head resting against the cold glass of the window, that it was as far away as India. Farther. When he had gone to India, there had been the hope, however faint, that he would come back someday. This time there was no such hope.

He would not come back to Bowden. Not while she was there.

It was altogether probable that she would never see him again.

She gazed out over lawns and trees. It was a day very similar to the one on which he had left before. Gray and blustery. She could not see the front of the house or the stables or carriage house. She did not know if he had left yet. She remembered the feeling of panic that had clawed at her stomach the last time. It had driven her finally to rush outside and down to the driveway so that she might hide among the trees and see his carriage pass. She felt the same panic now. But this time she could do nothing about it.

She lowered her forehead to her knees and closed her eyes. This time his leaving had been entirely of her own choosing. And if she had the choice to make again—if he came now to ask her one more time—she would not change it. He was going because she would not have him. Because she loved him.

She wondered if her suffering was sufficient to atone for what she had done to Lord Powell. She did not feel sorry for herself; she deserved this feeling of black despair. She hoped Lord Powell would find someone else. She hoped he would be happy. She hoped he would look back at some future date and be fervently glad that she had rejected him. She concentrated her mind on him, picturing the dark handsome face with its heavy eyebrows and rather large nose and slightly crooked teeth. She tried to analyze why it was that handsomeness did not always require perfection of features. She tried to distract her mind.

Ashley was leaving.

She would never see him again. And if she did, seeing him would make no difference to anything. It would only make her feel worse.

No, there was no worse way to feel.

She had not gone down to dinner last evening. Nor had she joined the family in the drawing room afterward. Anna had come to her later, after she had been to the nursery to feed Harry, and had told her that Ashley was leaving.

“Everyone will be returning home soon, Emmy,” she had said, taking her sister's hands in hers and smiling her sunny smile. “Everything will be back to normal again. There will be just Luke and me and the children and you—the way I like it best. Even Mother is going, with Doris and Andrew. You can live your life as you wish again. You can paint again. You can be at peace again. You will be happy, Emmy, once the rawness of these few days has passed. Lord Powell was pleasant, but he would not have understood you as Luke and I do or loved you half as much. You did the right thing.”

Dear Anna. No mention of Ashley or of what had caused her to break off her betrothal.

And so today he was leaving. Had left. There had been more than an hour of daylight already. Anna had said he was to leave at first light. He was gone. He was an hour on his way. Emily's arms tightened about her legs and she squeezed her eyes more tightly closed. Shutting herself in—totally.

The rest of her life had begun. So be it, then. And she would not cower in her room forever or escape outside merely for the sake of escape. She was going to dress respectably, just as she had almost every day since Lord Powell had first arrived, and she was going to go down to breakfast. There was the danger, of course, that everyone would be there. It did not matter. She would go anyway.

“Yass,” she said, getting determinedly to her feet and crossing to her dressing room.

She stood in front of her looking glass. “Yass,” she said. No, it was not quite right. Her lower jaw dropped too far. He should have told her yesterday, as he had told her about the
s
sound. This was the way the mouth and jaw should look. “E-e-e,” she said. “Yess.” That looked better. She would scold him for not scolding
her.
She smiled at her image.

And then her face crumpled before her eyes. She dropped her face into her hands and sobbed with unabashed self-pity.

•   •   •

“Emily
will come home with Constance and me,” Victor said. His face was unsmiling, almost grim. “'Tis only fitting. I am her brother, head of her family. Elm Court is where she belongs. I will be able to keep an eye on her there.”

“And Charlotte and Jeremiah will be close by,” Constance said. “'Twill be a consolation to her to be close to the church.”

Jeremiah added, “I have always said—have I not, my love?—I have always said that an unmarried daughter's place is in the home of her birth with whoever is head of that home. Emily can be taught to be useful at Elm Court. And Charlotte will help Constance to provide moral guidance.”

“La, it sounds almost,” Doris said, “as if Luke is not considered a responsible guardian.”

The Earl of Weims laid a hand over hers on the table and she subsided into silence.

“Emily would probably be happier away from here,” the Dowager Duchess of Harndon said. “With her own family and away from all members of mine.”

“Emmy will stay where she belongs,” Anna said, her cheeks flushed with color. “Where she has always been happy and loved. She will not go with you, Victor, to be made to feel that she is somehow a child who needs to be disciplined.”

Luke did to Anna what the earl had just done to Doris. He set a hand over hers. “You need not upset yourself, my dear,” he said.

“If truth were known,” Victor said, “Luke will be only too glad to be rid of Emily, Anna. It cannot be comfortable for him to know that his brother was the one to dishonor her or that our sister was the one who refused to allow Lord Ashley to retrieve his honor.”

“'Tis true, Anna,” Constance said, looking as if she was on the verge of tears.

Anna already was in tears.

“And you must consider your husband's feelings before your own or Emily's, Anna,” Jeremiah added. “He is your lord and master.”

“'Tis remarkable, by my life,” Luke said, his eyebrows raised haughtily, though the eyes beneath them looked more lazy than cold, “to find that so many people are privy to my inmost thoughts and feelings and choose to speak for me.”

He had not finished. But Emily, who had been sitting at the breakfast table, watching herself being spoken of in the third person, watching her future being decided for her, though she had kept her eyes determinedly on her plate for much of the time, did not wait for the rest. She got to her feet, folded her napkin and set it neatly beside her plate, and left the room. She resisted the urge to run.

There was nowhere
to
run. There was nowhere to go. Whether she wished it or not, they would decide for her. She was now and forever the spinster member of the family, a burden on them all whether or not they ever admitted it, even in the privacy of their own minds. It was the desire to avoid that very situation that had made her decide upon marriage. Better an unexciting marriage in which there was no deep love, she had decided, than dependence upon her relatives for the rest of her life.

Now she had no alternative to dependence.

And worse now was the fact that she was not even a
maiden
relative dependent upon them. She was a fallen woman. Perhaps they would never describe her as such, but every word that had been spoken at the breakfast table this morning had presupposed that fact. And the fact that she was subnormal, incapable of managing her own life. How weary she was of the sight of sound—too weary even to be amused by the thought. Sound, it seemed—voices—ruled the world. It was the only sanity.

She went upstairs for a cloak and then walked outside. She walked all the way down through the terraces of the formal gardens and across the lawn below them. She crossed the bridge and walked down the driveway into the trees. Strangely, in seven years she had never come back to that particular tree. But she knew it unerringly. She stood against it as she had stood that morning. She set her head back against the trunk and closed her eyes. Shutting herself in again.

This morning she was several hours too late.

•   •   •

Luke
waited for Emily to leave. He curled his fingers about Anna's hand. Like Emily, she had remarkable control over her emotions. Rarely did she become openly and publicly upset.

“'Twould seem to me,” Luke said, “that two important facts have been ignored both yesterday and today. Perhaps three. First, Emily is a person, with intelligence and a will of her own. Second, she is an adult—two-and-twenty years of age. Thirdly, she has already taken responsibility for her own questionable actions of two nights ago and has already decided her course. Perhaps discussing her future among ourselves, especially in her presence, is not the right thing to do. Perhaps we should consult Emily's wishes.”

“Bravo, my lad,” Lord Quinn said.

“Emmy will wish to stay here, Luke,” Anna said.

“Emily must learn that she gave up her right to choose yesterday,” Victor said.

“Emily needs to learn that she must be ruled by the men in her life,” Jeremiah said. “In this case, by Victor.”

“I shall offer Emily a choice that has not been mentioned yet,” Lady Sterne said, entering the discussion for the first time. “I shall offer it, not dictate it. And I would remind anyone who speaks of the men in a woman's life”—she looked severely at the Reverend Hornsby—“that some women manage very nicely without such a disagreeable watchdog. Harndon has already reminded us that Emily is of age. If she chooses, she may return to London with me. 'Tis the Season, when all the fashionable world will be assembled for enjoyment. I shall take her about and have the happiest spring since I had Anna and Agnes to bring out. 'Tis time that Emily was no longer coddled. She is
deaf,
not a mindless infant.”

“Bravo, Marj, m'dear,” Lord Quinn said.

Luke pursed his lips and looked amused.

“Aunt Marjorie,” Anna said. “Oh, Aunt Marjorie, you are a
dear.
”

“Impossible, madam,” the Reverend Hornsby said. “I would remind you that Emily is a fall—”

“Complete that thought, lad,” Lord Quinn said in perfectly agreeable tones, “and you will be licking up the blood from your nose.”

“Theodore!” The dowager glared coldly at her brother.

“Might I suggest the weather as a topic of conversation?” Lady Sterne said, getting to her feet and gesturing with both hands to indicate that she did not expect the gentlemen to scramble to theirs. “'Tis dull but invariably safe. I shall go and search for Emily. Faith, but the coming spring begins to looks brighter to me already. If I can but persuade her.”

Luke patted his wife's hand.

“The clouds are low and heavy, egad,” Lord Quinn said. “But they are white rather than black. Or perhaps gray, to be strictly accurate. Will it rain, d'ye think? Hornsby?”

•   •   •

Lady
Sterne watched from the lowest terrace of the formal gardens as Emily trudged, head down, up the sloping lawn from the bridge. She was not wearing stays beneath her gown this morning, but even without she had a trim and pleasing figure. Her hoops were small, but then large hoops were falling out of fashion. She was not wearing a hat, and her lace cap had slipped so far to the back of her head that it was hardly visible from the front. There was, of course, all that glorious hair, which might have been described as either golden or blond without too much stretching of the truth.

And then, of course, there were her eyes, by far her best feature. Men would fall in love with her eyes alone, Lady Sterne mused, even if the surrounding package were but moderately pleasing. And Emily was more than moderately lovely.

She dressed up to look quite superb. The older lady recalled how she had looked for the ball just three nights ago.

Lud, but she would do very nicely indeed, Lady Sterne thought, feeling her spirits lifting by the minute. She had begun on occasion to catch herself feeling old. At the grand age of fifty. That was what had done it, of course. Fifty sounded a whole decade older than nine-and-forty. She needed something to keep her young. There was Theo, of course, but he felt more like a dear old habit than a force of rejuvenation.

If she could but take Emily to London with her. If she could but be given the challenge of bringing the girl into fashion despite her affliction. No,
because
of it. Much could be made of the novelty of a beauty who could neither hear nor speak—except with those eyes.

As for virgin brides . . . Pshaw! Lady Sterne thought. If truth were told, any man would be thankful to avoid blood and skittishness on his wedding night.